1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods for transmitting and receiving messages in home appliance networking systems, and more particularly to a method for transmitting and receiving messages in a home appliance networking system, wherein a home appliance appends a unique message identification number to a header of a message and transmits the resulting message to a different home appliance, thereby reducing transfer errors of messages transmitted and received among a plurality of home appliances.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the development of Internet networks, recently, most home appliances have been made to be of a multifunction type having several additional functions as well as their original functions. For example, some home appliances may be equipped with local area network (LAN) cards or modems such that they not only transmit and receive data over communication networks, but also are automatically upgraded in version. Operations of such home appliances can also be controlled from any communicatable places outside of their installed places.
Generally, communication devices are installed respectively in home appliances to transfer signals between the home appliances and transmit and receive those signals via a communication cable. Also, through the use of a communication connection service provided by an Internet service provider (ISP), an external remote system can gain access to a specific home and control home appliances therein. Service centers for such home appliances can update programs associated with the home appliances while transmitting and receiving various data to/from the home appliances through the communication connection service.
In a conventional method for transmitting and receiving messages in a home appliance networking system wherein a plurality of home appliances transmit and receive messages over a network, the plurality of home appliances are interconnected via the network and sequentially reply to request messages from different ones of them. However, this conventional message transmission/reception method has a disadvantage in that the reply order to request messages may be changed due to different processing rates or transfer rates of the request messages, thereby causing reply messages not to be properly transferred to home appliances transmitting the request messages.
In order to overcome the above problem, an address of a home appliance transmitting a request message may be appended to a reply message. In this case, an address of a low-order transfer layer must be popped up as a high-order address, resulting in a complexity in an associated software algorithm and, in turn, an increase in error occurrence probability.